Homecoming
by MacsLady
Summary: This is an AU fic set in the same AU as 'Bad Dreams'. in which Claire did not die on 9/11.  Mac spends an evening with his family.


**Homecoming.**

**Disclaimer: All CSI: NY characters belong to the writers. Uglydolls belong to their creators. Zack and baby Aidan are my creations.**

**Note: This is set in the same AU fic as 'Bad Dreams'. Basically, Claire didn't die on 9/11 and she and Mac live in New York with their now seven-year-old son Zack (born in 2004) and baby daughter Aidan, aged 6 months. This fic is set around the time Mac returns to the crime lab in s8, after taking a few months off after the events of 'Exit Strategy'. **

Mac entered the apartment and closed the door behind him. He hung his jacket up in the closet and placed his weapon in the gun safe on the top shelf.

'I'm home, guys,' he called as he headed down the hall towards the living room.

A second later with a delighted squeal of,

'Daddyyyyyyyyyyyy!' Zack came charging down the hall.

'Hey there, little guy,' Mac said, sweeping his son up into his arms, with a pretend grunt of effort.

'Wow, Zack, you're getting bigger every day!'

Zack giggled and put both hands on the sides of Mac's face. Mac felt something powdery and sticky transfer from his son's hands to his cheeks.

'Did you have a good day, Daddy?' Zack asked.

'Yes, I did. What about you?' Mac said as he grabbed one of Zack's hands and examined it. 'I see you and Mommy have been making something. Let me use my detective skills to see if I can work it out.' He brought Zack's hand to his mouth and licked, making Zack giggle and squeal.

'Hmmmm, icing sugar,' Mac said as he carried Zack in the direction of the kitchen.

'Let me guess...muffins?'

'Nope,' Zack said.

'Ummmm...cookies?' Mac guessed.

'Yep, Daddy, cookies! But Mommy says we can't have any till after dinner.'

'Well, Mommy's right,' Mac said as he stepped into the kitchen and gently lowered Zack to the floor after kissing the top of his head, noticing bits of icing sugar in the boy's dark mop of curls as he did so.

'Claire, I've seen crime scenes that are tidier than this,' he joked as he surveyed what that morning had been a relatively tidy kitchen, considering it was inhabited by a seven year old, a 6-month old, and Claire.

Claire, who was washing up some chocolate stained bowls and other utensils turned to him and smiled.

'Oh, stop complaining,' she teased.

Mac crossed the room to her in a few strides and pulled her close, leaning in and kissing her passionately.

Once the kiss ended, Claire pulled back slightly and smiled up at him.

'You have sugar on your face, Detective,' she said, laughing as she wiped it off with a paper towel.

'You taste like chocolate and sugar,' said Mac in return, 'Have you and Zack been sampling the cookie mix?'

'Damn, caught again!' Claire said with mock frustration, 'I guess that's the downside of being married to a CSI. How was your day, anyway? Are you settling into being back at the crime lab?'

Mac nodded.

'Yeah. Jo's been really supportive, and now Danny's over in uniform, I feel I don't have to look out for him the same way as before.'

'Good. It's where you belong, Mac. That team of yours need you.'

Mac nodded.

'How was your day?'

'Good. It's nice to have a day off.' she said.

As Claire busied herself finishing off the washing up, Mac moved over to where six-month-old Aidan sat gurgling in her high chair playing some sort of game of her own devising with her cuddly Babo Uglydoll that seemed to involve poking it repeatedly in one of it's eyes and pulling at it's arm and occasionally chewing on it's hand.

'Hey there, beautiful,' Mac said.

Aidan looked up at him and Babo was instantly forgotten as she gurgled happily and reached her pudgy little arms towards him.

Mac gently picked her up out of her high chair and kissed her soft cheek. Aidan gurgled again and put her hands on his face, her green eyes looking right into his as she continued to gurgle at him.

As always when he came home and spent time with his wife and children, Mac felt a surge of love and gratitude well up inside him. As with Zack, he'd had his doubts about his ability to be a good father to Aidan, and those old fears that he'd experienced before Zack was born had resurged. But as with Zack, he'd overcome those fears as best he could - although cases involving kids and babies still shook him up even more than they had before he'd become a father, he'd found that the joys and rewards that came with having a child made the stresses, strains, and worries worthwhile. Baby Aidan and little Zack had been the reason he'd taken four months off from the crime lab and seriously considered permanent retirement after that horrible incident on the roof when he'd almost died, but they had also been the reason he'd returned a little over a month ago. Claire had encouraged him.

'Mac, being head of the lab is what you're meant to do. It's dangerous, but if 9/11 taught us anything, it's that anything can happen to anyone, no matter how 'safe' their job may seem. That lab is where you belong, and your team need you. Go back. Just try to cut down maybe a little bit on the Supercop stuff, okay?' she'd said

So Mac had gone back. He wanted to be able to help people who had lost someone they loved to violence, to put bad guys away, to try and make the world a little bit of a better place for his children and other people's children. He'd missed the adrenalin rush and sense of satisfaction his job brought. He'd missed his team, especially Jo and Don. And after naming his daughter after one of his fallen colleagues, after a detective he'd not only admired professionally but been very close to personally, after that Aidan had sacrificed herself to put a bad guy away and in doing so had left a message only he could understand, he couldn't really contemplate giving up his job with the NYPD permanently.

Plus, with Stella gone and Danny over in uniform, the load of responsibility he had to shoulder in regards to his team had lessened some.

Baby Aidan suddenly started crying, bringing Mac sharply back from his thoughts of the past.

'Uh oh, looks like someone needs a new nappy,' Claire said from across the room. Mac smiled at how she seemed able to tell from Aidan's cries what was wrong with her. He lifted Aidan up and smelled her nappy.

He winced.

'Looks like you're right. I'll change her, ' he said, 'Zack, why don't you help Mom with the drying. Unless you want to help me change your sister?'

'Ewwwwwww, NO, Daddy, when Aidan poops it's soooooooooo gross!' Zack said, leaping from the table where he'd been sat and grabbing a dish rag as fast as he could.

'Looks like it's just me then, Aidan,' Mac said as he carried her through into the living room.

He laid her gently down on her changing mat and grabbed wipes, talcum powder, and a fresh diaper from a nearby table. Aidan had stopped crying now and was just whimpering slightly. Mac undid her nappy, and winced at the deeply unpleasant reek that came from it. He tried not to look at the surprisingly large amount of poop Aidan had produced.

'How is it that something so tiny and beautiful can produce this much gross stuff, hmmmm?' he asked her. 'I find that very suspicious, young lady,'

'You know,' he continued, as he removed the dirty diaper and dumped it in the pail, then began to clean her up, producing gurgling sounds from his baby daughter, 'I think I might have to take you to work. Use you in interrogations. One whiff of that stuff and the bad guys would be confessing as fast as they could,'

He applied talcum powder and put a fresh nappy on, Aidan wiggling and gurgling as he did so. He cleaned his hands with another baby wipe.

'What do you think? Do you want to help Daddy bust bad guys?' he asked as he lifted her up.

Aidan gurgled at him and made a sound something like 'ba-gooh, da'.

'Is that a yes?' Mac said, blowing a raspberry on her tummy, 'Is it, little one?' He blew a second raspberry, and Aidan squealed and wiggled in delight.

Mac carried her back to the kitchen and placed her back in her high chair.

'I'll get changed,' he said, 'Then help you restore this kitchen to something that looks like a kitchen, and not like a bakery after a raid by a crazed Cookie Monster.'

Claire and Zack laughed, and Aidan gurgled.

Mac went into his and Claire's room and quickly changed from his suit into a black t-shirt and his comfiest jeans, which were faded and torn. He ran his hands through his hair, mussing it slightly, then went back into the kitchen.

He, Claire, and Zack managed to restore some kind of order to the kitchen, and then Mac insisted Claire relax in the living room with the kids while he made dinner - his famous cheeseburgers. Claire was resistant at first, but once he said the word 'cheeseburger' she changed her mind.

They ate in the kitchen, Claire, Mac and Zack having cheeseburgers, and Mac feeding Aidan some sort of baby food that involved mashed potatoes, carrots, and parsnips and quite a bit of which seemed to end up down Aidan's front, on the high chair and on Mac's t-shirt. Claire, rather than helping, laughed at him from across the table.

After dinner, Claire washed up while Mac bathed Aidan, and the baby food stains on his t-shirt were quickly joined by quite a bit of water stains. After her bath, Mac ran a fresh one for Zack, leaving the door open so he could keep an eye on him as he handed Aidan over to Claire for a bottle feed.

When he went to help Zack out of the bath and to dry himself, Mac's t-shirt became even more drenched, and Zack took great delight in running his wet hands through his father's hair until it stuck up at odd angles.

About an hour and a half later, both his little terrors were in bed and asleep.

Mac had changed his black t-shirt for a gray vest. As he entered the living room, Claire smiled at him, a distinctly wicked slant to her smile

'Why, Detective Taylor, you look very sexy tonight,' she said as he sat next to her on the couch, kissing him.

'You look beautiful,' he said.

'Mac, I'm wearing my oldest, scruffiest t-shirt and jeans.'

'You're still beautiful to me,' Mac said, kissing her, 'I haven't been able to stop thinking these last few weeks, what with the anniversary of the attacks, how close I came to losing you. If that meeting hadn't been cancelled...'

He glanced away for a moment. Claire felt the slight shudder that went through her husband's body, and how his shoulders tensed. She understood. As much as he threw himself into and loved his work, she knew that he would give it up for her and the kids if she asked him to. She knew that she, Zack, and Aidan came above all else for Mac, and that he would do whatever it took to keep them safe. But she also knew that he didn't just feel the need to be there for and protect them. He *needed* them, plain and simple. For all his toughness and his Super-Cop tendencies, Mac was a very emotional, and vulnerable, man. Just because he didn't show those emotions to everyone didn't mean he didn't feel them. He was, Claire knew, a man who felt and did nothing by halves, whether that was catching criminals, helping victims, or being with and loving the three of them. As much as he could drive her to distraction with his stubborness, his complaining about what he saw as her 'mess', and the hot temper that so often got him into trouble with his superiors at work and which more than once had been unleashed upon any suspect truly dumb enough to insult or threaten his family, Claire loved her husband deeply, and that depth of emotion and the vulnerability that he let so few people see, was one of the things she loved most about him. She, too, had been thinking recently how she could have died in those attacks on that beautiful Tuesday morning ten years ago, never seen Mac again, never had the chance to have kids with him or to meet Reed, with whom both she and Mac had a strong relationship.

'Hey, you okay?' Mac asked softly next to her ear.

Claire smiled softly at him.

'I'm okay,' she said, 'I love you. You drive me nuts sometimes, Mac Taylor, but I love you.'

'I love you too,' Mac said. They kissed, for a long time, Claire running her hand through Mac's slightly damp, messy hair and over the back of his neck, one arm tight round her waist, his other hand running through her hair.

When they parted, they shared a smile that spoke of the depth of closeness and trust and mutual need between them.

'Damn, Mac,' she said, somewhat flustered by the kiss.

Mac grinned at her slyly. Her hair was mussed, her cheeks flushed, and she looked absolutely beautiful to him.

'Do I get to have a cookie now?' he asked, smirking.

The End.


End file.
